Stop Gap
by whiskeyneat
Summary: It's snowing in Panem. A palace under the earth, where her shoes were danced to pieces. A live coal, where his heart used to be. The Red Shoes takes place in the six months leading up to the 74th Hunger Games, and is a dark not-quite fairytale set in District Twelve. Gale/Delly; eventual Gale/Madge; implied Everlark.
1. Delly Ruins Everything

**Stop Gap**

 _ **part i • the red shoes**_

1 • delly ruins everything (January, 74)

The first time he notices her is not because of her legendary kindness, her sun-kissed hair, or the way she smiles at everyone, even the dirtiest Seam derelict. Her smiles always seem genuine, but there can be nothing truly genuine about a Town girl, even when she's trying to be nice. That's just the way things are. Beauty and kindness aren't something you give away for free in the Seam, they place you in someone's debt, and no one likes to be beholden, not even to a person like Delly Cartwright. She gives away those smiles as if she has a thousand to spare. Everyone at school knows she's a soft touch.

She _is_ a Town girl, after all. You don't expect them to be tough.

She wouldn't last two seconds in the Seam, Gale is sure of it. So what is she doing in the Hob, of all places, on a school day? He has an excuse, at least—he's been laid up with a hacking cough this past week, but that doesn't stop him from going hunting. Even if he can't be in school there's no excuse for not hunting. But Delly? No.

This is all wrong.

People expect Seam girls to skip school, to drink white liquor and dance too freely. No one expects a Town girl with dark green eyes to stroll into the Hob and haggle with a stall owner. It just isn't done. Hell, it's even making Gale uncomfortable. The Peacekeepers have noticed too, if Cray's slanted sideways glances at Delly are any indication, and Gale feels his hand drop to his hip, as if his knife were there. His fingers are itching for it. Delly isn't like Katniss. She's a babe in the woods, a fool for even coming here.

But that doesn't matter. She's a merchant girl. He should just ignore her.

He lets his hand drop, and pulls a wild duck out his game bag, plunking it down on the table for Greasy Sae. She snaps out her fingers and pulls his ear. "Friend of yours?" Her scratchy voice brings him back to reality. Heat shoots up the back of his neck. After all, it's not like he was _staring—_ was he?

"No," he says loudly. He looks straight at Delly when he says it, and he sees her back stiffen, just. "She's no one."

"Whatever you say, boy." Greasy Sae closes her hand over his, two coin for the duck. "But she should know better than to go out in the dark."

"It's midday, not midnight," Gale says, annoyed. He doesn't need to be told what the right choice is, but he still doesn't want to do it. _Forget her, she's an idiot_ , he tells himself, but then he sees who Sae is gesturing subtly at. There are men watching Delly, some openly leering, others slouched in the shadows.

But that's none of his business.

"Gale?"

If only her eyes didn't remind him so much of a doe's. If only she didn't _smile_ like that. He wants to shake her until her teeth rattle in her head. Doesn't she know that you shouldn't smile at men in the Hob? Hell, doesn't she know you shouldn't smile at strange men _anywhere_?

Except he isn't a stranger. Not quite.

If anyone is a stranger, then _she_ is.

He's gone his whole life looking past her. He's never really seen her at all.

Gale is confused. This isn't how things are supposed to be. If any other girl was here in front of him with a bag of illegal contraband in their hands, he would know how to proceed. With Delly, he knows nothing. She is an unknown quantity. It is eerie how much she discomfits him: the firelight reflected in her eyes and the taste of cider on his tongue, the green of her cloak and the scent of winter. She is smiling.

"Gale," she says again, and he glares at her. She swallows, and he can see the blue veins under her pale skin, moon white. She has a scattering of freckles over her small, upturned nose. It would be adorable on anyone, anyone else.

He says, "What are you doing here," not even bothering to hide his sneer. In truth, he barely knows her. Doesn't she have a keeper? Isn't there some sort of unspoken rule that Town girls shouldn't go into the Seam alone?

"I'm trading," she says. "Isn't that what this place is for?" Her tone is light, but sarcastic. He was right about her, but that realization doesn't give him any satisfaction. Under the sweetness and light he detects a chill. She is fake, fake, fake. He doesn't care what happens to her. He just wants her off his hands. "Do you want to see?" Her voice is strangely hesitant. "That lady says you have feathers. I need some feathers, for..." her voice trails off into a whisper.

"Not here." He takes her by the arm, roughly, and she squeaks. People are curious, they stare and stare, and it makes him feel angrier with her than ever. Is she stupid? Does she really not see it? They make it to the side door before Cray steps in their path.

"Well, hello there, Beauty," he says. Yellow teeth, sour breath. His eyes glint as they rake over Delly like she is a Seam girl. A Seam girl wouldn't meet Cray's eyes, she would be sullen and meek. Besides the fact that he's Head Peacekeeper, everyone knows Cray has a taste for young girls. And when your family is starving, you can't be choosy. You please whom you must to survive.

But maybe Delly doesn't know any of this. In fact, the more Gale watches her, the more he becomes convinced that she is either very, very innocent or very good at acting like it to fool people.

Her eyes grow wide and fawn-like and she drops her eyes modestly, then flits them back up to Cray's face. A delicate blush pinks her apple cheeks. "Sir." Her voice has risen, it is a little girl coo, so sweet that Gale's teeth ache. He wants to leave her and melt into the crowd, anyone this stupid surely deserves to be left behind.

And why doesn't he? This is none of his business, after all. But he knows why. His mother raised him right. He's going to get this stupid merchant girl out of here, deliver her straight to the edge of town, and never speak to her again if he can help it. But first...

"My, what a pretty little thing you are," Cray murmurs. He steps closer to Delly, lifting her chin with one finger. "Let's have a look at what's under that...cloak...of yours." His eyes are full of darkness, and Gale stiffens. It is almost too late.

Delly's lower lip trembles and her eyes fill with tears. It takes everything Gale has not to roll his eyes so hard they fall out. "It's for my gr-gr-gr-grandmother," she stammers with a sniffle. "She's very s-s-s-sick." Her knuckles are white on the handle of the bag.

 _Idiot, idiot._ "She isn't from the Seam," Gale says, finding his voice. He doesn't want to stick up for her and it must show in his voice because Cray stares at Gale, hard, as though he's just noticed him standing there.

With a sideways smirk at Gale, Cray runs a finger down Delly's cheek, and lowers his voice. "If you don't want to show me here, I'll walk you back to your grandmother's house. You can show me what's in your... _basket_...along the way."

Delly's lashes (sooty, coal-smudged) flutter against her pale cheek and she slams the heel of her shoe down on Cray's toe, hard. Her basket swings out and connects with Cray's gut and he doubles over.

Her hands fly to her mouth, in a too-large O of shocked surprise. "Oh, dear!" She says in a horrified voice. "I don't know what came over me! I saw a spider and I just acted on instinct! Please say you forgive me," she lisps in her little girl voice.

Gale can't help but admire her pluck, but he wants to make as much distance between Delly and Cray in the next few minutes as he can. "Come on," he says, tugging at her elbow.

She looks up at him, and he is falling, falling. The Hob is suddenly too crowded, too dense. The eyes are watching, all around them.

"Come on," he says again, and this time she listens, letting him lead her out the door.

•

"You are either the bravest or the stupidest Town girl I've ever had the misfortune to meet." The snow is falling thicker now, and she puts her green hood up, the ghost of a smile flitting over her elfin face. She is almost beautiful, in the same way that something rare makes you want it more only because it is rare, not because it is anything extraordinary.

She twists her toe in the snow. She is wearing little red boots, the color of blood. "A girl who wears the right shoes can do anything." She lifts her chin. "I'm not stupid, Gale Hawthorne."

He nods, once. He has to give her that. Then he surprises even himself. He reaches into his sack and pulls out the swan's wing that he'd meant to save for Katniss, to fletch her arrows. "Will these feathers do?"

The exuberant hug he receives is answer enough. The curve of her neck smells of leather and apple pie.

" _Thank_ you," she exhales, her lashes fluttering.

"What do you need them for, Town girl-Delly?" He realizes this is the first time he's said her name throughout their entire exchange. She bestows a golden smile on him, and he feels it right down to his bones. As though he could walk away right now and all of a sudden everything in the world would slot into place and come out exactly right.

But this is foolishness. It's like her personality is rubbing off on him. He steps away from her. If anything, he trusts himself less.

Putting a finger to her lips, she winks mischievously. She stands on tiptoe and her warm breath tickles his ear. "It's a secret." Her lips brush against his earlobe, and he wonders if she can hear the sudden, unexpected thunder of his heart.

"I can't go under the fence," she says, stepping away from him. "But I like to think we all do what we can."

He watches her go, red boots leaving tiny prints in the snow, soon erased by the thick blanket of white that covers everything.

Like she was never really there at all.

Author's Note: I wanted to write a DellyxGale fic - first, because I really like obscure pairings, and second because I like creepy/dark fairytale-esque AUs. This isn't on a particular update schedule and it doesn't have a beta. I'm just working on it to destress from wedding planning right now. I *do* intend to finish it - I am winging it from a very barebones outline. There isn't a set pairing, but there's an endgame. So be patient and be gentle with me, readers. Comments make my day, so please share your thoughts with me! I adore reviews.


	2. Heart On Your Sleeve

2 • **Heart On Your Sleeve** (February, 74)

Gale thinks about Delly only when he isn't supposed to. He thinks about her at the slag heap as Leevy pulls down his zipper with her teeth: lips brushing against his ear, feather light. _It's a secret._

He sees her out of the corner of his eye around the bonfire when he's drinking with Thom, but because he isn't supposed to notice her, he pretends she doesn't exist.

"What are you always looking at that merchant girl for?" Thom wants to know. Gale never has an answer for him.

Katniss doesn't notice, because Katniss never notices (and that hurts more than it should).

Gale knows he should be grateful for the respite, but he isn't.

He tosses and turns at night, dreaming of her in the forest with him, luminescent: skin like the moon, stars in her eyes. In his dream she has wings on her back like a swan, and together they soar off into the wilderness, leaving everything most loved behind.

When he wakes there is only the silence, vast: it stretches on forever.. He tastes resentment on his tongue and bitterness like gall. He hears the bell ringing to let the men into the mine, the tick-tock of the death watch beetle. Soon it will be his turn to go down, down, down into the underworld.

He will forget these strange dreams and her uncanny liquid eyes that look right through his own, straight to the soul. He will forget her as surely as the sun rises in the east and sets over the Capitol.

She is a Town girl. She is no one. She is nothing. Only —

The scent of leather and apple pie.

And red shoes.

Dancing, dancing, dancing, until they fall to pieces.


	3. Happy in Another Life

**3 • happy in another life (Spring Equinox)**

"Gale, can you take Posy to Town after school to get new boots?" Hazelle asks as she hands Gale his coffee. The floor is colder than his socks are warm, but the he can't see his breath this morning - at least there's that. Maybe spring is coming after all.

"What?" Gale doesn't realize he's said it so loud until Hazelle arcs a brow, amused.

"My toes is frew my shoes," Posy says, showing him the holes in the toes of her boots. They are black and cheaply made, hand-me-downs that belonged first to Prim Everdeen, then to Vick, and patched until they are nearly a new shoe entirely. There's no question the boots are in terrible shape. That's not the problem.

"We can't afford it." Gale crosses his arms and frowns. "They'll just have to last until summer." In summer, Posy can run barefoot. He tweaks one of her pigtails and she giggles, hugging his leg.

Hazelle puts the money on the table. "I got us a discount at Cartwright's. You can take Posy there this afternoon. Besides," she continues, "Rory and Vick both need new pairs as well. I've heard Mr Cartwright is looking for fur to line boots... Perhaps you could strike up a bargain."

Gale snorts. "A bargain? I could go to the Hob and get a better bargain in the secondhand bin than whatever 'discount' you got us _there_." In the Seam you don't swallow your pride, or trade it for a bunch of furs. His mother, of all people, should know this.

"Gale just doesn't want to see the shoemaker's daughter. Everyone knows he hates her," Rory grabs another muffin, stuffing them into his cheeks so he looks like a chipmunk. He crosses his eyes at Gale.

"Hmm," Hazelle purses her lips thoughtfully, eyeing Gale. "How very inconvenient for him."

"I'll take Posy and Vick, Ma," Rory puffs his chest out. "I think Delly is nice, and she's got the biggest boobs — "

"Shut up," Gale growls, clamping his hand over Rory's mouth. Rory chokes on the muffin and Gale pounds on his back until it shoots across the table straight into Vick's lap.

"Ew!" Vick cries, flapping the pages of his book. Crumbs rain down on the floor, and Hazelle hands the broom to Rory.

"Aw, but Ma! We'll be late." He sweeps sullenly, maddeningly slow.

"Should have thought of that earlier." Hazelle can't help but smile down at her coffee. "Posy will be ready this afternoon for you to pick her up, Gale. Don't be late."

Gale swears he can hear his mother laughing all the way down the street.

•••

He looks for Delly at school, but she isn't there, which makes the curiosity turn to anxiety. Is she trading in the Hob again? Is she lying home, too fevered to rise? He doesn't know. Why has he never worried about her before, not until she is gone?

He doesn't like it.

At least Katniss can be counted upon to be there when you look for her. Gale feels an upswing of relief course through his veins at the sight of her small compact frame, her black braid. "Catnip," he says, coming up behind her.

"Gale." She grins when she sees him, it brightens her whole face. Usually this causes a surge of warmth throughout his entire body and lasts him the whole day, rationed out until he can see her again. Today that warmth is conspicuously absent, replaced by a cool calm.

He does not know whether to panic or rejoice over this development, but he pushes it away. There are more important things to worry about, and he isn't some soft Town boy, raised to embrace his feelings and emotions. No, there's a time and a place for all that, and it sure as hell isn't surrounded by a crowd.

"Meet me later?" He nudges Katniss, and she nods, once.

Words aren't needed between the two of them. They fill up the space needlessly, they are only background noise. The real moments are out there, in the woods.

Gale moves through the rest of the day looking over his shoulder for Delly all the same.

•••

When he gets home, he selects the furs before seeking out his mother. She looks him up and down, smoothing his collar with her chapped hands, red and cracked from washing other people's laundry.

They treat you differently when you're from the Seam, so you have to dress extra nice as not to arouse suspicion.

Gale despises it.

"Be careful," is all Hazelle says. Why? Is buying shoes suddenly dangerous? She nods to the furs. Oh. He lays them out on the table for her inspection.

"This one." Hazelle runs her hands over the plush sable, the fox tail, the soft white rabbit. She sighs with delight, bringing them up to rub against her cheek. " _All_ of them."

If Gale were a rich man, he'd buy his mother a coat of sable, made from the finest pelts of every marten left in the world. He'd find her gloves of such buttery leather that her chapped hands would never burn from cold again. It hurts his soul that his mother, the one person in the world who sacrifices so much, often has to make do with barely anything at all.

Hazelle squeezes his shoulder. "You're growing up such a fine man, Gale. Your father would be proud of you." She gives the mink pelt one last caress, and then hands it back to him. "This will make a good trade. You should know that Posy is almost beside herself over rumors of that display — apparently, little Violet Rowan got to see it as soon as it went up, and all of the girls are in ecstasies."

 _Display_? "What do you mean?"

"It's the first day of spring." Her look speaks volumes. "As you know very well, young man." She lays the back of her hand on his forehead. "That is when all the merchants put their seasonal wares from the Capitol up." Hazelle sniffs, suddenly drawing into herself. "Addy Rowan claims Anders Cartwright has outdone himself. Remember it for me, and tell me all about it when you come home."

 _Cartwright. Display. First day of spring_. The relief that washes over him is palpable, causing Hazelle to eye him shrewdly. "Yes, Ma."

•••

As soon as they turn the corner of Main Street, Posy lets out a yelp of excitement and lets go of Gale's hand to rush toward the gaggle of small girls clustered around the display window. She is too small to see over their heads, and when she tries to push forward, they elbow her out of the way. Even standing on her tippy-toes, her small black head cannot peep over the sea of blonde Town children.

Gale is fuming. How can they tell she is Seam? Her clothes are perfectly cleaned, starched and pressed. Her hair is tied back with a pink ribbon. Her face and hands are clean, with no line of coal dust at her wrists or neck. He picks Posy up and puts her up on his shoulders. Now he can feel the eyes of the Town women on _him_ , raking him up and down like _he_ is the interloper.

Posy will learn soon enough what it means to be Seam. Let her hold onto her innocence just a little longer, Gale prays. Let her forget that she is different.

But when he sees the display window that all the girls in Twelve have been dreaming about, he knows with a bolt of white hot rage that this will never come to pass.

' _Made to Order_ ', the sign reads. As if they lived in the Capitol, and had money to burn on anything except the barest of necessities. The shoes are made in the Capitol too, no doubt: fantastical creations that look out of so place in Twelve they may as well have come from the moon.

The shoes are ribbons and beads and feathers, they are frothy and impractical. They are glass and silk and midnight, twelve pairs for twelve districts. Some up-and-coming Capitol designers made these, no doubt, reminding every district of the sacrifices they will be required to make in three months time.

"I want the silver ones with the white feathers!" Posy is pointing to the pair in the center display.

Crap, he's forgotten why they came here in the first place. The game bag slung over his shoulder suddenly feels conspicuous. No wonder these Town matrons are giving him such searching looks.

"Do you want to meet the girl who works here?" Gale tugs on Posy's foot to get her attention. She instantly snaps to and peers down at him from up high.

"Oh, _yes_." Posy's voice is high and breathless. "Put me down!"

He complies and grabs her hand just before she can dash towards the front door. Gale squats, putting a finger to his lips. "I know the secret entrance."

•••

A freckle-faced boy not much older than Posy opens the door. "Hello?"

Gale clears his throat. "Is your Pa in?" He hefts up the bag. "I'm here to make a trade."

"Ethan, why don't you go get Papa?" Delly is suddenly there, surprising Gale so he does not know what to say to her, all his rehearsed patter for Mr Cartwright a jumble in his head.. "Hello." Delly flashes him a quick look he can't read, then squats down before Posy, putting herself on his sister's level. "You must be Gale's little sister."

"Yes," Posy breathes, her eyes shining like lacquer. "Are you the girl who makes shoes?"

Gale clears his throat to correct her, but Mr Cartwright enters as Delly takes Posy's hand, leading her into the shop. He has no choice but to remain.

•••

"These are some mighty fine furs, Mr Hawthorne." Mr Cartwright is a spare man, tall and thin with sad eyes. He offers Gale a plug of tobacco, which Gale declines. "She'll be over the moon for that sable." He sucks on his cheeks.

"How much?" Gale can't afford to be anything else but all business. He thinks of the swan's wing, how Delly had turned it over and over in her small hands, her pale face filled with wonder.

"I think you'll find I'm a reasonable man to do business with, Hawthorne. How does this suit you?" He scribbles the amount on a piece of paper and Gale's eyes go wide. It will keep them in extra coal for three months, just enough to make it until summer. "Why don't you go pick out whatever you need for your family. I'll be back shortly." Cartwright holds his hand out to Gale and they shake on it.

Gale is almost embarrassed by the speed with which he decamps the stockroom and heads for the shop, pulled like a fish on a lure towards the sound of Delly's voice.

Almost.

•••

Gale pretends he is looking at boots for Vick and Rory, he pretends he hasn't noticed Delly. Yet when he feels her eyes on him, for a change, his spine straightens by its own accord, an electric tingle dancing across his flesh.

Gale moves closer, silently, and his eyes meet hers briefly between the shelves. She is a swan and he is a wolf, she will never see him until it is too late, for by then the wolf will have the swan maiden in his clutches, and he will never let her go.

He almost drops the boot he is holding in his hand when she appears beside him. She is thrown into shadow by the tall shelves, but he could eat her up right now with no one else the wiser.

He wants to lick the hollow of her collarbone, to see if she tastes of feathers and cream.

"...your mother dropped off her pattern and the ones for the boys earlier." Delly is tracing swirls on the edge of the shelf, and she looks up at him from under her lashes. "I'll just measure Posy... And you, if that's all right."

His cock goes rigid and his heart is in his throat as she trails her fingertips down the seam of his trousers. She looks up at him from under her lashes, biting her bottom lip.

This Town girl. Always _pretending_ to be so innocent. She'll be his undoing, if he isn't careful.

(Or maybe, he'll be hers.)

"I'd say you need a larger size than what we carry in the store." Her hand brushes against his cock again, and she stands on tiptoe with her hands on his chest, her lips against his ear. "You could help me look in the stockroom later."

All of the blood in his head rushes to his cock, and he fights the urge to throw her over his shoulder and run into the back of the stockroom, _now_. Instead, he moves closer and closer to her until their bodies are pressed together, his hands at the small of her back, her hands pressed to his chest. As he leans down to taste her lips, intoxicated by mere proximity, Mr Cartwright's voice breaks in.

"Delphine Cartwright!" He's standing near the stockroom door, and can't see them, Gale realizes with a rush of relief to his veins.

Delly stands on tiptoe, and brushes her mouth against his for one tantalizing moment. "Later" can't come soon enough. "Yes, Papa?"

"I need to go to the tanner's. Hold down the fort while I'm gone, won't you?" Mr Cartwright winks at Gale. He probably wouldn't leave, Gale thinks, if he knew what Gale planned to do to his daughter.

Maybe Gale will stop thinking of Delly, once he's had his fill of her. (He can't decide whether that's a good thing or not.)

•••

When Delly opens the door, a wave of humanity surges inside. Mostly, it's just a mass of little girls squealing, their mothers following more sedately. How she does it, Gale doesn't know, but somehow, in less than five minutes every single one of those screaming monsters is sitting cross-legged on the carpet in front of her, quiet as mice. Posy is at her elbow, beaming from ear to ear. In her hand, she holds the silver shoes, which up close Gale can see are embellished with feathers, which lay in a swirling pattern, like smoke.

Delly claps her hands together and clears her throat. "The shoes are for girls made of smoke and shadows. They are a black swan's wing, or a firebird's feather, or a glass slipper. They are coal that turns to diamonds, and diamonds that turn to dust." She is spinning a tale, one Gale has never heard before, and he is drawn to listen as though he is a part of it himself.

She doesn't even know what she's doing to him, what she's done already.

"Do they come in adult sizes?" Some wit calls out, and laughter races through the crowd.

"Once there were twelve sisters who lived long ago in a far off land called _L'Ile dans Le Mer..._ They were called _Les Grues Noir_ , the Black Cranes, and every shoe here represents one sister and her shoes. If you wear this," she says, waving at Posy, who holds the shoes up for all to admire, "you will become like Odette, who danced until dawn in a palace made of glass. When the sun rose, she turned into a swan, cursed to never claim her true form until a man with a pure heart pledged his love to her." The women smile at the story, and the little girls give a collective sigh.

"What does _L'Ile dans Le Mer_ mean? Posy wants to know," Ethan says.

"Yes, I'd like to know that as well." The crowd parts for the Head Peacekeeper, a hush falling over the assembly that has nothing to do with a spell. "It just goes to show, if you give a Town girl a free pass to wander through the Hob, she'll bring back some sedition."

With a wave of his hand, Cray invites his Peacekeepers into the shop.

Gale makes a grab for Posy and as he pulls her away, he sees Delly's eyes, wide and dark as an animal that must go to ground.

 _Go_ , Delly's lips form the word, and Gale clenches his fists. If Cray touches her, he'll kill him with his bare hands. Only Posy's presence stays him.

"Isn't that right, little girl? Not so brave without your _tin soldier_ by your side, are you?" Cray has a sneer on his ugly face. No man likes to be bested, and especially not by a slip of a girl with a thousand tales in her eyes and feathers in her hair.

Cray grins, and pandemonium reigns as batons shatter the display to pieces.

• • •

Posy has stopped crying by the time they reach the outskirts of town. "Why was he such a big meanie, Gale?" She asks, her face pressed to Gale's shirt. "Odette's shoes were so pretty."

"I don't know, little squirrel." Gale sets Posy down, and she frowns at her black boots, wiggling her toe. "I'll find you something prettier in the Hob." He thinks of the shoe, burning a hole in his pocket. It'll fetch a good price. It is worth at least ten pairs of practical boots.

"But they won't be _Odette's_ shoes." She pouts, sticking out her bottom lip. "I want to be a swan princess!"

How dare Delly fill his sister's head with fairytales? Doesn't she know that Seam children aren't allowed to have such dreams? "That was just a story," Gale grinds the words out between clenched teeth.

"Ethan says it's a _real_ story," Posy turns to him, eyes like stars. "He says Delly tells him every night about the twelve sisters. I want to hear the stowwy, Gale. Will you tell me tonight?"

He can't deal with this shit right now. He needs the silence of the woods. He needs to clear his head.

• • •

But late that night, when the night is as dark as a curse and the moon's light makes a silver path across the patches of snow, Gale sneaks out of his bedroom window and makes his way across the town line.

The shop is closed up, shuttered against the prying eyes of friends and neighbors. Every window is closed tight, save one, and a single candle burns on the windowsill, throwing unholy shadows on the paving stones. As Gale steps closer, his heart is in his mouth and his hands are clenched in his pockets, as if to keep himself from doing something irreversible.

Inside, Delly is sitting at her workbench, steadily mending shoes in the soft light. He must make a noise, for she lifts her head and looks straight at him. Her face is stained with tears.

Just as Gale thinks about stepping forward, Delly walks up to the candle, and with a breath, extinguishes the light.

XxX

 **A/N:** I know, I should be posting another chapter of The West Wind. But sometimes, the Muse wants what she wants.


	4. Cast No Shadow

**4• Cast No Shadow (April)**

"What's wrong with you today, Gale?" Katniss prods. "You've been retying that snare for ten minutes."

Seam boys shouldn't look at Town girls. They are everything a man can't have. Never is this sentiment more clear than when Gale drinks in the sight of Delly every morning at school.

He can never have enough. He always wants more, more, more.

To stand next to her and breathe in her scent, to watch her as she feels his gaze upon her: lashes fluttering open wide, the pink stain across her cheeks, the almost audible hitch of her breath, the blood coursing hot through his veins as he makes his approach.

He's never had to chase someone so hard before, usually they fall into his lap without him having to lift a finger.

Funnily enough, Katniss is probably the only person in this world who would understand. After all, her own mother was a Town girl, at least until she married a Seam boy. They broke the taboo, and no one has been brave — or reckless — enough to break it since.

The tilt of her chin and the constellation of freckles across her cheeks, the curve of her hip where his hands had rested just so. The way she looks straight inside of him, so close she could reach in and take out his heart if she dared, but instead, she always moves just out of reach.

His heart aches with a ferocity he didn't know he had inside of him, for something he might have had that has been lost.

"I was just thinking about the house I'm going to build you, out there," Gale lies smoothly, smiling at Katniss. "A nest beside a lake, with crane feathers to fletch your arrows, a lynx fur to cover your bed, and boots made with the fur of every creature in the forest."

She gives a little start, sitting back on her haunches. Gale's is a smile that does not reach his eyes, it is that of a man whose happiness has been stolen from him before its time.

"I don't need crane feathers, Gale." Katniss frowns, looking at him strangely. She has made quick work of skinning the muskrat, and she rubs her hands clean with sand and ice cold water. "What I have will suit me fine." She taps her boot with one finger. "See? No holes."

"Sure, Catnip." Gale's hands go to the snare, but his thoughts turn inexorably back to Delly.

Every night at midnight for the past thirteen nights, Gale has woken out of a dead sleep in the darkness. He's gone to his window, where he sees a girl with a red hooded cloak and no shadow, walking due east. By the time he can pull his boots on and run out the door after her, she is already gone, and in her place is a stone with a hole through it, or a crow's feather, or a handful of bluebell petals.

He keeps these things with the silver slipper, hidden under a floorboard in his bedroom. He doesn't dare take them out to examine them in light of day, for fear they'll crumble to dust at the touch of his breath.

Instead, when the air is still and the sun has begun to sink over the mountains, he takes them out with a whisper and a prayer and lays them out in a circle, each tiny treasure a promise. Of what, he doesn't know, only that he must hold fast to them until the time comes.

A time that was once upon, that never was, when the darkness turns to light and every secret wish inside a heart can come true.

"Gale," Katniss nudges him again. "It's time to go."

Back to the coal-choked alleys, where nothing green ever grows. To the sagging houses, the children with bellies bloated from hunger, the living corpses who cannot afford to the coin to pay their passage out of the underworld.

Yes. It's time to go.

•••

When Gale and Katniss reach the Hob, they drift apart almost at once: Katniss to the smell of Greasy Sae's stewpot, and the chance to trade for a hot steaming cup of broth; Gale, to wander through the stalls. He does not know what he is looking for until he sees it, half-hidden in a jumble of old rags.

Nor does he know how he ends up behind the shoemaker's shop, only that he is there all at once as though a sleight of hand has whisked him from the Hob to her door. Instead of knocking, he lays his offering down on the steps, and then he turns his back and walks on, into the dying light.

•••

 **A/N:** In the Victorian Language of Flowers, the bluebell means "I am constant."


	5. Box of Rain - pt 1

**5 • box of rain, pt 1**

When Delly opens her window on the last of May and climbs out onto the fire escape, mist hangs in the air, obscuring the mountains. The air smells pleasingly damp and green to the east, and from the forest just beyond the fence she can hear a cacophony of birdsong, as if all the birds in the trees have decided to sing for her at just this precise moment. Though she knows that is ridiculous, she is still pleased to hear it. It is a sign, she thinks.

Her mother, Alais, placed great stock in signs. And now she is gone, like sunlight on the water, to a place Delly cannot reach, even if she slipped her fingers between the threads of time and space.

Sometimes when Delly sits here, on the fire escape, she thinks she can see Alais from the corner of her eye, about to touch her shoulder and wake her up from this dream, in which they are forced to live without her forever.

But it's always just that - a dream.

Delly is no longer a child, praying every night on her knees to the spirit of her grandmother for her mother to return home from the dark palace, drifting down the starlit river in a coracle made of glass. Before her mother left, she would tell Delly the tale of the twelve girls from _L'Ile Dans Le Mer_ every night, of how they were betrayed by their own people, under the auspices of a terrible curse.

Twelve girls, whom men call the Swans, stolen from their homeland every thirteen years, to serve the king in his dark palace under the earth and dance on broken glass until their bare feet were sliced to ribbons. And after that, why, they were forced then to serve the king and his court in a different manner entirely... But Alais would not say more.

Alas, it is a dark tale: the oldest tale. The kind of tale where only one escapes; and her sisters are left behind, wild roses that bloom for a season and then fade. Another season of sacrifice comes to pass, and the girls dance in the palace yet again, on and on until the bones of the girls sink into the damp clay beneath the city **;** dancing shoes hung in the trees for magpies to pick at, faded strips of silk and sinew used to line their nests.

Delly is no stranger to dark tales, for all she is born of Merchant Town. After all, she lives in one herself. The only way to not let the darkness destroy her is to keep a protective circle around herself and the ones she cares for.

Only then will they be set free.

For even before her mother went away, before she bequeathed Delly her stories, Delly has known about the illusion of choice: to bend her head to the yoke of the Capitol and to die a slave, or to die in the Hunger Games.

•••

There is a thick, yellowish fug of coal smoke hanging over the Seam, obscuring the sky. If Gale were to look up, he is sure the sky would be of deepest blue, so bright it burns to look upon.

Instead, he keeps his head down and his collar up, walking the line behind the wooded meadow, where scarlet winged blackbirds make their nests in the orchard, and sing of the dawn to the dying night. The fallen fruit of autumns past disintegrates beneath his boots as he slips, unheeded and unbidden, beneath the silent fence.

The woods are still and quiet of a morning, a thick fog rolling in from the hills. The farther he hikes, the less he hears the sound of the District waking, the rush and hiss of the trains pulling in to load up the previous evening's haul of coal. From the north, a great stillness, surprisingly loud for all that. A prickle runs down the back of his neck and he turns, studying the line of the forest.

But it is empty.

Half an hour later, when he's checked all his traps, he sits beside the marsh, cleaning his kills. Today was nothing out of the ordinary - a few fat rabbits, a squirrel, a clutch of duck eggs, still warm from the nest. For now, he wants to catch a fish or two, for they are jumping in the early morning, and Gale isn't sure how it's happened, but he has acquired a taste for the impossible.

Later, he'll walk past Delly's father's shop, and maybe he'll be brave or foolhardy enough to go in the front door. He'll bring her the first wild roses of summer, the wind and the rain and the taste of the forest on his tongue. He'll bring her here, to the place where the water meets the shore and the sky, and they'll say all the impossible things to each other, all the things they've never said.

Maybe then she'd look at him in the street, or acknowledge him at school.

His heart turns painfully over in his chest. Before, he might have casually looked past her, and never cared that she did not know his name. Now, he cares too much.

Katniss walks so softly, he does not hear her until she's practically on top of him. "Gale! Why didn't you wait for me?"

"Mornin', Catnip." Gale pats the grass. She sits down next to him, resting her elbows on her knees as she gazes across the water, her eyes flickering with the reflection of the dark trees on the other side. "I saw a pair of groosling earlier, over there." And something else, something that still raises all the hair on the back of his neck. But he won't mention that.

A part of him will always want to protect her, even though he knows she's perfectly capable of taking care of herself. She is one of his pack, and has been ever since the mine explosion that killed both their fathers, binding them together forever in ways he can't quite explain, only that they belong to one another now, the same seam of coal running through their veins, as thick as blood.

"Let's go." Katniss grabs her pole from the grassy shore where it is hidden. "It doesn't look like you're catching anything here. We can bring the poles to the other side too, so it's not an entirely wasted trip."

"Yes, mother," Gale teases her.

"It's only _practical,"_ Katniss huffs. "Are you coming?" She tosses her braid back and sets out, the line of her shoulders stiff and unhappy.

"I was just funning, Catnip." Gale looks towards the dark line of the far shore again, and picks up his spear. Whatever is out there, whatever is watching... it won't catch him unprepared.

XxX

A/N: sorry this is so late. I've been trying to keep up inspiration for this part, sadly, it's flagging badly. I've changed tactics and I won't be covering the Reaping, just referring to it in the second part in minor flashbacks.


	6. Box of Rain, pt2

**Box of Rain, pt 2**

What does one wear to a Reaping? The milliner's window is full of somber hats, black and gray and mourning lavender - _Reaping_ hats, Delly thinks with a shudder. She keeps walking down Main Street, glancing in the windows. It's not as though she doesn't know what she'll wear - she has a trunk full of her mother's dresses, after all - but it gives her something to do on a day when they're all on edge, to keep from running to the outskirts of town, where the breeze goes where it wants and the birds beyond the chain link fence sing of _**freedom-freedom-freedom.**_

Delly has never wanted to go there more than today, to skim her hands over the tops of the tall dandelions and sent their puffs dancing into the air, to make a thousand and one wishes come true, to cup her hands in an ancient spring no one has ever drunk from before and perhaps - perhaps - remain forever young.

Tomorrow, her name will spin in the Reaping bowl along with countless other souls, and just the turn of Fortune's wheel will determine her fate. A little dream to keep her warm at night, that is all she wants. But no - that is a lie - for Delly wants everything. For the stars to rise east of the sun and west of the moon, and to grow a pair of wings to fly away, past all mortal reckoning.

"Delly?" Madge Undersee, slender as a yarrow stalk, waves her hand in front of Delly's face. "I've called you, like, five times. Are you okay?"

"Fine, I guess. I'm just..."

"Yes, tomorrow. I know. It's perishingly hot today. Do you want to go get a lemonade at the tea shop? My treat." Madge is nervous, Delly can tell by the way she twists her hands on her little satin clutch. "Please."

"I guess." Delly doesn't want to, not really. But when the Mayor's daughter crooks her little finger, you must acquiesce, or pay the price. The neighbors are watching, all up and down Main Street. So Delly throws on her thousand-watt smile, links her arm through Madge's, and allows herself to be led to the cool interior of Twelve's best - Twelve's _only_ \- tea shop.

Once they are seated, and have had their orders taken by the fawning propietieress - having the Mayor's daughter in her establishment is like having a Capitol stamp of approval, she may as well hang a sign in the window - Madge stops twisting her hands together and speaks.

"I'm in love." The words come all out in a breathless rush of schoolgirl confidence. "I know it's the worst time, but it's been awhile since I... and I thought maybe you... Maybe you would... Oh, I can't hold it inside any longer. I thought... Well, everyone knows you're so good at keeping secrets, Delly."

 _Secrets_. Persia Mellark, breaking Peeta's fingers with her rolling pin on a hot summer afternoon not unlike this one. Her mother, fleeing in the night, with only a valise under her arm and a promise to return, one day. Gale Hawthorne, slipping unseen across the town line, to leave feathers on her doorstep every morning. Yes, she knows secrets. The only currency worth trading for.

"...and I don't know if _you've_ ever been in love, Delly, but..." The casual emphasis stings, though she thinks it isn't meant to. It is thoughtless - though Madge is rarely thoughtless, just exacting and precise in her affections. Usually she can be found sharing confidences with Katniss Everdeen, whom Delly only knows of because Peeta loves her from afar, _has_ loved her ever since they were barely out of swaddling clothes.

Delly just smiles enigmatically, stirring honey and cream into her tea. It's the oldest story - the _only_ story. "I know what it means to fall in love." She touches the talisman the Seam boy left her, strung on a piece of sinew, close to the beating of her heart. Is this what it is? To have her heart nearly fly out of her mouth whenever he is near, to suddenly become so overwhelmed with shyness that she cannot speak a single word in his presence?

"Good." Madge sighs, sipping her tea, strawberry and hibiscus, the scent of summer hovering around her. "Will you help me, then? Everyone says - your mother... Will you read my tea leaves and tell me true, does he have feelings for me? Because I think he hates me."

What does her mother have to do with tea leaves? Oh. _Oh_. "You want me to read your fortune?" Delly asks. "Why don't you just ask him how he feels? I bet he already knows."

"I can't, he's - _not a Town boy,_ " Madge whispers urgently. "I can't just ask him to go out walking! People would talk. And I'm the mayor's daughter, I'm expected to set the example." She extracts a square of paper from her purse. " _Please_ , Delly. Everyone knows your mother could read the future in a teacup, or the lines on a palm." Madge says, exasperated.

"All right." At Delly's acquiescence, Madge lets out a deep sigh, a smile transforming her face. She slides the teacup across the table and watches as Delly, with expert eyes, studies the dregs. "Hmm," Delly says. "Here's what you should do. At twilight, go to the orchard and stand under the cherry tree beside the fence. Carry with you an old key on one of your hair ribbons. At the hour of twilight, when both the sun and moon mirror each other in the sky, ask 'does he love me?' and the key will start to spin. Before it has made three turns clockwise, you'll have your sign."

Madge's eyes are wider than saucers, and she crosses herself quickly, an ancient gesture from before the Dark Days that isn't lost on Delly. "You saw all that in a _teacup_?!" She eyes the porcelain as though it has suddenly become a snake that might bite her. "How do you know it works?"

Delly shrugs, though she doesn't know exactly how to explain. What would she say? _My mother told me stories that are not stories, to read between every line, and of a long line of girls who lived and loved, gone now beyond the palace under the earth_. "My mother..." And that is all she has to say of Alais Cygne, really. Everyone knows that girls who come from the edge of the wilds in Seven are not like normal Townsfolk in Twelve, but wicked and wonton, dangerous. Delly knows what folk say, that Alais Cygne seduced Anders Cartwright away from his rightful fiancée, that she swayed his head, that she deserved every wicked thing that happened to her before her fall.

That her disappearance was both the best and the worst thing to happen in Twelve, for though it should have brought good luck, instead the mine exploded.

That perhaps their delight and having gotten rid of her was no luck at all, but a dire premonition of terrible things to come.

For every kindness Delly brings to another person, for every good deed, she is erasing the stain of her birth. Folk don't whisper of her misdeeds when she walks by, or of her mother's sins. They only see her sweetness and light, they are fooled by golden hair and a gentle manner. She is everything a Merchant girl _should_ be - soft and pliant, wise and kind. The kind of girls who bloom like summer roses, who are snatched up by eager boys to birth a passel of children to become district cogs for the machine of the Capitol.

Girls like Delly don't go to the edge of the orchard at midnight, they don't read rouge their cheeks or dance too close with Seam boys. They don't wear red cloaks, or accept dowry gifts from hunters with dark hair and gray eyes, or divine their futures in the bottom of teacups.

Only Peeta is permitted to see beyond the facade that Delly shows to the good folk of Twelve...

And Gale.

She won't think of him. He is not for her, not if she wants to prove what a good citizen she is. Still, she dreams. If she were brave, she would take a mirror, and lean over the well by the coal pits at midnight during the Harvest festival.

But tomorrow, all of it may be gone in an instant, her future stolen from her on a slip of paper, her destiny nothing but spectacle, blood and sorrow in the turn of the wheel.

For ever since Delly Cartwright met Gale Hawthorne in the Hob, ever since he gave her the swan's wing, she has looked for signs, to tell her she has not made a mistake, that she is doing the right thing.

She touches the talisman around her neck. It is warm from her skin. She has not taken it off since she found it beside the back door of the shop. It is an aegis of luck, a good omen. "Here," Delly says, passing the ancient skeleton key to Madge. "Make sure you give it back."

She almost hesitates, wanting to snatch it back. In her head is her mother's voice, whispering a warning. _"Il est le fou qui brusque la fortune_." (It is the fool who tempts fate)

Madge's smile is blinding. "I will! Oh, Delly, thank you!" She passes her the slip of paper. It is for the Reaping tomorrow - a little packet of calming powder, just in case. Her stomach churns.

Delly has always lived with the axe of the Capitol poised over her neck. The question is not _if_ it will fall, but _when_.

However this goes down, she's not going to go quietly. They won't break her. Tomorrow, she could die.

Until then, she'll live.

•••

Katniss has fallen asleep in the dappled shade, whistling softly in her sleep. Gale makes sure she is unseen, pulling branches around her to shield her from view - though why he's taking these precautions, he wonders. And yet... Hovercrafts have been known to fly over these woods before. It's only prudent, after all, to be practical. He kisses his fingers, touching her forehead, then rounds back to the stand of trees from that morning, his bow on his back and his arrows at the ready. Instead of covering open ground, he sticks to the tree line.

He hasn't gone more than fifteen hundred yards before the shady trees give way to marshy ground, and above, a hawk dips and soars on the air current, while the loons sing sorrowfully in the eddies of the swamp. The clouds draw in, and a soft mist rises up from the ground. Gale is wary, is it a Capitol trap or a natural phenomenon?

That is when he hears the singing. It is a broken sound, mournful and yet sweet. He drops to his hands and knees, and half-swims, half-crawls through the reeds to the edge of the pool. Between the tall reeds he can see a woman, with long golden hair and a white dress, combing her hair in the reflection of the water. The song she sings is like nothing Gale has ever known, the language of it lost from human memory.

 _He made harp pins of her fingers fair_

 _He made harp strings of her golden hair_

 _He made a harp of her breast bone_

 _And straight it began to play alone_

He is sure he hasn't made a single noise, and yet her head snaps up, the comb flying from her fingers as her gaze meets his across the pond. There is a sudden flurry of wings from above, and Gale finds himself face to face with the biggest, blackest swan he's ever seen in his life, great wings spread to block out the sun. It rears back its great head, letting out a sound like a human scream.

The sound shakes Gale from his reverie, and he draws his spear, pointing it at the bird.

"Gale!" Katniss comes crashing through the pond, drawing her bow in one fluid motion.

The air seems to stop as the arrow looses from the strings, and the great bird lets out a trumpet of fury, rising into the sky. The arrow hits its wing, but it shakes it off as though it is merely a splinter. It fixes Gale with a terrible look that rocks him straight to his core, for in that look he sees what he had not seen before - eyes that are entirely human.

 _Mutt_.

"Mutt!" Gale shouts at Katniss as from the trees by the shore erupts a cacophony of snarling and howling of wild dogs. He looks for the woman, but she is gone. Where she sat beside the pond is a gleaming comb, and deaf to Katniss' shouts, he wades through the muck of the pond to grab it.

•••

When Gale returns from the wood, the sun is already dipping beneath the mountains to the west, and the moon has risen, a ripe and heavy globe on the opposite horizon. He is unsettled, and his skin crawls with knowledge he should not possess. He has to see her.

"Gale?" A whisper under the cherry tree, near the orchard fence. Her head is bowed, in the setting sun her hair a blaze of golden fire. In her hand is the key, tied to a silvery ribbon.

Gale doesn't think twice, he moves like a man possessed.

In the dusky gloaming of the orchard, Gale kisses the girl under the cherry tree, realizing only too late that she is the wrong girl, and that he is the world's biggest fool.

xxx

A/N: lyrics are from an old ballad called "The Bonny Swans" and the idea of Delly reading tea leaves is from author theory of mice, used with permission


End file.
